Barbara: Hi everyone. And welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
Today's speaker is me and the topic is: what are seminary students learning these days? I grew up Lutheran, mostly in new England, and was a military brat as a kid. I'm now a military spouse for over 20 years. I earned a master's of social work from Salem state in Massachusetts, and have worked with children, teen parents, adults, and military families.
It was an adventure living in Germany for nearly five years, and we recently moved to upstate New York close to the Canadian border. I went back to school a year ago and wanted to share some lessons learned from the classes I took that first semester. I will be sharing Bible verses - the first one is my favorite overall from Jeremiah chapter 29. Some people caution that we should not use this verse the way we sometimes do, because God was saying something really specific at that time. God's people were in exile in Babylon and God was promising a return to their home. However, I don't believe that it's wrong for us to take heart in a promise to us now. The book of Jeremiah is part of the Hebrew scripture found just past the middle of your Bible, right after Isaiah. Here's Jeremiah 29, verses 10 through 13, from the message version.
“This is God's word on the subject. As soon as Babylon's 70 years are up and not a day before I'll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen. When you come looking for me, you'll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I'll make sure you won't be disappointed.”
It's important to me that I honor a few different things about these verses. I believe that God does not abandon us, even when things get bad. I can't explain everything in the world, but I believe that there is redemption. I feel furious when people are abused, and I don't understand why some people get sick and die while others are healthy and live long lives.
There is sin in the world, and we all contribute to each other's wellbeing and suffering. I don't believe that this Bible verse is just a “feel good” sentiment that everything will be okay here on earth, and soon. Maybe it will, but it doesn't seem like it right now. We are also called to trust God.
When my husband deployed, I didn't know if he would make it. I know that many did not. And I feel guilty that my husband was okay while others were not. But I felt like I had to trust that there were no guarantees and that my own life, as a child of God, did not depend on the survival of anyone else or even myself.
Anyway, I take comfort from having a sense that God knows more than I know, and that I am not abandoned. So how did I end up in college again? That's why I read my favorite Bible verse a minute ago. Going back to graduate school after working full time for decades has not been too bad. That said I'm grateful for the GI bill, which allows me to be a student and not have to worry about bringing in a paycheck at the same time like I did for my first degree. Good thing, since I couldn't find a social work job in our second location in Germany. I prayed about finding a program that was a fit for me. And I believe that I'm in it now. The classes had to be online a year ago because we were living in Germany. So the transition to online now with the pandemic was seamless for me. My classes were and continue to be really interesting.
So here's some of what I learned last fall. Book recommendations and websites will be detailed on the podcast website, 40 minutes of faith.com. Lutheran ethics was one of my favorite classes. The most powerful textbook was about the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who participated in the resistance movement during world war II.
I have a quote from a book titled “The Bonhoeffer Reader” edited by Green and DeJonge. On page 791, Bonhoeffer writes: “God wants to be recognized in the midst of our lives in life and not only in dying, in health and strength and not only in suffering, in action and not only in sin. God is the center of life and doesn't just turn up when we have unsolved problems to be solved.” That was really noteworthy for me, cause it's really easy for me to turn to God when I'm in distress and need help. And I also want to be thankful for the many blessings in my life. Also on page 816 in the same book is a poem, which I'm going to put the link to on the website.
The poem is “Who am I?” It's about Bonhoeffer's feelings as he was incarcerated for participating in a plot to murder Hitler. And that was actually one of the reasons that we talked about Bonhoeffer because one of the 10 commandments is “thou shall not kill.”
So it's an ethical dilemma to think about when, if ever, is it right to kill someone? And there's lots of other things I could talk about with that commandment, but I'm just going to keep going on the classes for last fall, and then this fall, I'm actually in a different class that includes the 10 commandments.
So I'll talk more about those things, a different episode. So I do recommend the poem “Who am I?” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of the many Bible verses from this course is Matthew 10:16, which from the message is: “stay alert. This is hazardous work I'm assigning you. You're going to be like sheep running through a Wolfpack. So don't call attention to yourselves. Be as cunning as snakes, inoffensive as a dove.” There's a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. that expands on this verse.* We also read some of the social statements from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is the denomination that I'm part of and their website is ELCA.org
The social statements are about diverse topics, such as care for creation, peace, and many other relevant topics. I'll include a specific link also to the ELCA social statements portion of their website so that you don't have to go searching for them. It'll go straight to the social statements. Finally, during this class, I was very sorry to learn that Martin Luther, who founded this denomination of Lutheranism, even though he didn't really want it called Lutheranism, it's called Evangelish in Germany.
He wrote some terrible things about other people, including Jewish people. I want to offer my apology over that transgression. Growing up, I had only heard about Luther saying that some of the practices of the Catholic church were not in accordance with his understanding about the Bible. For example, the church during Luther's time sold indulgences, which people had to buy in order to have less time in purgatory.
And Luther objected to that. He said we don't have to buy our way out of anything and it's wrong for the church to sell that, that forgiveness is a free gift. In addition to Luther’s writings that were, I believe wrong about Jewish people, he also said unkind and frankly, hateful things about gypsies and peasants.
And he had some, I believe, brilliant moments of faith and insight. And then he was a human and a sinner, like all of us. And that's one of the Lutheran beliefs. We are all saints and sinners at the same time, but at any rate, I still feel very badly about some of the things that he said and wrote that were then used later to persecute other people.
Another class that I really enjoyed a year ago was called 21st century leadership. We read a wonderful small book by Henry Nouwen. I highly recommend his writings. During that class, we learned about boundaries, servant leadership, and organizational development.
We had some really fantastic guest lecturers who talked with us about starting new ministries resources and the impact of ministries on families among other topics. I'm not going to read the Bible passage for that class in its entirety, because it's from the gospel of Mark, the 10th chapter verses 35 to 45.
So it's a pretty long passage, but really it's about people who wanted to be first in line to sit with Jesus in heaven. And so the whole passage is about who's asking to be first and is that really the right thing to do? And it talks about being a servant and what does that mean to serve other people?
So one of the techniques in this class I wanted to talk about for a minute is a very powerful way to study scripture. And it's a very quiet way. So there's probably official directions on how to do this, but here's my summary of my understanding of how to do this. You select a passage, and 10 verses might actually be too long for a lectio divina- those are the Latin words for basically a divine reading, but a few verses, even one verse. And it can be done in a group and certainly individually as well. But the passage is read, and you just absorb it into yourself, into your mind, into your heart, into your soul. Quietly. And maybe there's a word that grabs you, that just jumps out to you, that's meaningful. And if you're with a group, you could say it out loud, or if you're by yourself, I have no problem writing in my Bible. So it's underlined and scribbled. I take notes in the margins and things like that, but it's just sit with that word or the phrase that was meaningful to you. And I don't have a certain number of seconds or minutes to wait for that pause, but maybe if it's done in a group setting, maybe there's an agreement, we'll have this much time of silence.
And then the passage is read again, and it could be maybe a different person reading it, or obviously if you're by yourself, you read it again and just notice what you notice. It could be the same word or phrase. It could be something different. You could journal about it. You could pray about it. You could just wonder about it.
You could just be with it. We tend to be action oriented and what's next? And what do I have to do? And for me, the experience of this process, a couple of different times that I've done it is that it can be restorative, it can reveal some interesting things. It can just be time in God's word. And if you're like me, you might have a to do list that's running through your mind and that's okay.
But just set it aside and just spend time with the word. And we did this Lectio Divina reading every week at the beginning of class, with the intention of seeing if anything jumped out to us, what did we notice? That was really interesting. I enjoyed that. That was a very meaningful and powerful experience.
So I would highly recommend a class in leadership, especially in faith-based ministry leadership. We had other very useful textbooks and I can list those on the website as well.
Now you might ask what are plural worlds? That's a quote, plural worlds end quote question Mark. There were some really tough textbooks in this class and in a few other classes, but really, especially this one where I needed an English dictionary to understand the vocabulary words in those textbooks. So students spent plenty of time in the Bible, as well as other documents.
And at the end of this course, I found out that it's all about spiritual development and it's not necessarily supposed to be easy. I say that with the intention of really encouraging anyone who might be struggling with aspects of faith. I felt a bit behind the pack in this class, but who is to say that those who talk a good talk have an accurate understanding that's better than mine?
One of the concepts that Martin Luther taught is that our faith is about a relationship with God. There are many things to learn and to prayerfully seek to understand, but the leadership course just mentioned taught that we are imperfect and that's okay. So there could be other students in this class who would recommend some or all of the textbooks in this class.
And I am just going to be really honest because I struggled so much understanding this class, even though I'm a lifelong Lutheran, I've gone to church- that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand everything that you read or that you see- that I am recommending books that I absolutely love that I hope you'll love.
And you can find all the books you want yourself, you can Google plural worlds. You can find lots of different kind of faith development textbooks anywhere you go. but I have a few other things to recommend. So I just want to support and encourage everyone's individual faith journey. Even if it kind of feels like it's meandering around and there might be some boulders to climb over. There might be some ditches to jump over or find a bridge, or you're just kinda talking with other people and asking questions and having conversations. And I just want to support and encourage that and say, we don't have to have all the answers to everything. And it's also okay to change your mind over time. I don't think we necessarily talked about that in this exact class, but is it true that we have to keep every single belief the same from when we were young teenagers, young adults, middle age, older, whatever, or does our faith sort of evolve as our understanding of the world and our relationships with each other and our relationships with God evolve? So that's what I have to say about that class.
I actually enjoyed a class on research. I was surprised because I had to take a research class for my social work degree, which was very mathematical and statistical. And I struggled with that class a lot. We were required to take statistics before research methods.
This was 20 years ago and it was hard and I'm glad I did it. I made it through, I was very proud of myself. And at the end of the research class, I understood why we had to do it because people can manipulate statistics pretty much any way they want. And there are some pretty strong guidelines on what makes for good research- who's paying for the research?
How is the research conducted, who is being studied? How are they being studied? What is being studied? Is there abuse or mistreatment going on during the study, which there has been in the past, and I'm sure there is now too, but there's more safeguards in place to protect that. But anyway, this research class was not the same at all.
It was different and also very interesting. So I had the chance to learn from Germany at the time of this class, how to get information from really far away. And one example is something called a Bible commentary, which is either a really huge book or maybe even a series of books explaining different things in the Bible.
And of course, it's all online these days. Now, generally I am not the biggest fan of reading tons of information online, but it was just a revelation to me what I discovered in this class. So I went over to the military library that was closest to where I lived at the time. And they had a nice Bible commentary from 1971.
And I don't know how much it weighed- five pounds, 10 pounds- it was massive, but I took it home and read parts of it for another class that I'll tell you about coming up next. And you might say, well, the Bible hasn't really changed since 1971, which is true, but a lot more research and learning has been done since 1971.
And there are also different perspectives. So an example that I learned just this past semester, is that due to some research and exploration that's happening around the biblical lands is revealing additional cultural information that might not have been known in 1971. And one of my favorite Bible commentaries is actually called the women's Bible commentary. And it specifically looks at the point of view of women in certain passages, how women were talked about, or frankly not talked about in the Bible. And there's so many different kinds of commentaries that you can find from different perspectives, different authors who might've been interested in a more particular viewpoint, say for example, a LatinX point of view or, liberation theology is a concept of who is being oppressed and who is being liberated. That's probably not the greatest explanation ever, but I just thought of it right now. And I didn't have time to research a definition beforehand when I was planning.
So in terms of whose point of view is either there or not there, whose voice is missing. That was another question from a different professor, but anyway, things like that will come out from different types of commentaries. So I was amazed to see how many different kinds of commentaries there are and the faculty that I had tended to say, see if you can find commentaries from the last 10, 15 years.
Not that there's anything wrong with what was written in 1971, but see what contemporary researchers and scholars are writing about. Another thing I learned about is Bible dictionaries. Now I've had a Miriam Webster dictionary since elementary school. I think I finally got rid of it before we moved the last time.
Don't tell anyone- and then of course I missed it once I got rid of it, but I've been moving this thing around to lots of different places! A Bible dictionary is gonna give a lot more information obviously about things in the Bible. And there are some online, but again, I want to just invite you to consider when you're looking things up online, take a look at a couple of different sources. Right now, I do have access to my school library online with my student ID. So I have learned many interesting things through a bunch of different classes in Bible dictionaries, but just as an example of something that I looked up right before this recording for what the general public can find without going through a school library. And I saw, of course it started with a letter “A”, whichever one it is that I looked up, so I said, Oh, Aaron, the brother of Moses, how interesting, let me click on that and see what it says. So here was tons of information about Aaron, the brother of Moses.
And I thought, let me see what it says about Miriam. And this particular online dictionary had like one sentence about Miriam, who was their sister. And I thought, that seems a little strange- Miriam wasn't a major character in the Bible, but a significant character.
So I looked at a couple of different Bible dictionaries. And some of the other Bible dictionaries had more information about Miriam than the first one that I looked at that had a lot of information about Aaron. So that's obviously my own issue that I was interested in, but I kind of wanted to point that out that there's different sources and different types of information and different amounts of information that you can find.
Another class that I really enjoyed last fall was about the minor prophets. And I wasn't even really sure who that involved, but I was very interested in spending a little bit more time in the Hebrew scripture, which is known as the old Testament among Christians. And we read the books of Hosea, Joel, Amos, and more.
And the classes had written assignments and discussion boards that were actually video voice threads. So this was my first time with a new type of technology and I'm very comfortable typing. That's no problem. I'm used to typed discussion boards, but I was nervous about these video voice thread discussion boards.
It's the same concept. You have a question, you answer it, but you answer it talking into your computer camera, it's recorded. And then your classmates view your recording instead of reading your typed words. So the first one that I did, I wrote out everything that I wanted to say ahead of time. Some faculty had a time limit, maybe say four minutes.
They're like, that's enough. Say what you need to say in four minutes, but not all of them had a time limit, and same on the response. So for the first video I read what I had written and it was fine and the responses were fine. And as I got to know my classmates through these video voice threads way better than you can get to know someone through typing.
It was a very positive experience. And I gained confidence as the semester went on to the point where I didn't have to write out my whole answer ahead of time and then read it into the camera. But we had to do some academic work ahead of time anyway. I mean, you knew the question ahead of time.
So you were basically summarizing your written assignment. So that was a very positive experience for me. Not all schools have it, but I just wanted to give a thumbs up and part of the purpose, I think as well, that makes sense is that some professions and careers, you never have to do any public speaking at all, but chances are, if you're going to do any faith-based type of work you're probably going to be talking with more than one person at a time. So maybe it was a confidence booster in terms of I'm going to have to talk to groups of people so I might as well get used to this concept. And I wonder if it prepared anyone who was doing extra public speaking now during the pandemic with recordings and things like that.
I'd like to think that it helped prepare people without us even knowing at the time that that's what it was for. This class textbook titled a short introduction to the Hebrew Bible by John Collins. And I would recommend that textbook. It was very interesting, and it covered more than just the minor prophets, but included lots of interesting information.
The final class that I wanted to talk about today was called spiritual practices. This is something where the entire student body reads the same book, but we have small group discussions each week. And there was a Psalm that we read, often multiple scripture passages that were either required or optional.
And I strongly want to recommend the book that we read last fall by Deanna Thompson titled the virtual body of Christ in a suffering world. And I thought, Oh, well, this sounds kind of interesting. I wonder what this is all about. And it was eerie. The relevance of what she wrote about that we finished reading three months before the pandemic forced a shutdown of our state and, stay at home order, no church gatherings and things like that.
So her question was how can faith community support people through web based methods? Actually, she provided a bunch of answers to that question. And the author freely said at the beginning, along with many, many people today, no way, no how, this is not “ministry”, this online stuff. And what happened is that through some personal experiences, the author shared that, especially for ill, homebound, snowbound or people with long work schedules online church might be their only church and prayer can be done on Facebook.
See, for example, a group called Planting Roots, that was not in the textbook. That's just a group that I'm familiar with that offers online prayers and the author disclosed how other sites say for example, caring bridge, people may be familiar with, to support medical crises can be a terrific way of including people rather than excluding them.
And especially these days when we often can't even go to the hospital to be with someone or go to their home, if they're medically vulnerable. And in addition to physical vulnerability, in terms of germs and infections and things like that, the author also talked about emotional vulnerability. And I've been in times when people ask me in 2005, how long my husband was going to be deployed for, I literally could not answer the question because the order said 500 and some odd days, I couldn't get the number 500 out of my mouth without crying.
And I didn't mind that they asked and, I don't even know if Facebook was around- maybe it was around then. I don't remember exactly, but anyway, that's just sort of an illustration of someone's emotional situation. If they're battling say a serious illness or people are maybe asking the same questions over and over again, or it takes a certain amount of mental and physical energy to be social when you're sick, when you're in pain, when you're having different types of issues in your body and maybe in your soul. So in the end, the book was a ringing endorsement of different ways that we can support each other electronically. And also looking at certainly there are in-person methods- nothing can ever take the place of holding someone's hand, but there may be times when we just can't do that.
So I would highly recommend that book. And I also wanted to encourage creativity in terms of prayer and spending time with God. So during our small group sessions, the students took turns leading the courses each week and we were invited to do so in any way that we felt comfortable. So one students wrote a poem. We had the chance through a combination of email and paint, create a painting. Word clouds, listening to music when we were talking about various ways of connecting with God, and I really appreciated that. And a lot of people are okay with talking and some people find great meaning in other ways of expressing themselves or just of listening, responding.
So I wanted to read one of the Psalms that we talked about together during that class a year ago, which is Psalm 51 verses 10 through 12. And from the new revised standard version, it goes like this:
“create in me a clean heart, Oh God. And put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
Some of you may think of music as soon as you hear those words, because for some faith groups or depending on when, where, and how you worship, that's a phrase that you sing every single week in church (“create in me a clean heart, oh God.”) Except at this point, some people haven't been able to be in church for a really long time. So those words were a consolation and just put a smile on my face when I immediately recognized the words. So those are the classes that I participated in a year ago.
And obviously every seminary experience is going to be different. Even the students at my same school, some of them took Greek. Some of them took a class about worship that semester. Some students were doing an internship. So even within my school, the classes are different. And I know that other schools have different programs, different requirements and different types of classes.
So this is by no means representative, but I thought, Hey, this is a really neat experience for me and might be of interest to others to hear about some learning and teaching that's going on. And some different books or websites to take a look at if you want to do some of your own study. So I would really, again, encourage and support any different type of learning that you're interested in, and any different types of responses that you feel called to with your skills of art or music or dance or anything like that.
So thanks for listening and I look forward to your feedback. Comments are always welcome at fortyminutesoffaith.com. The transcript of the episode is posted. And a comment section at the end of it. And your questions and suggestions are welcome. Thanks and praying for your day.
Resources:
Jeremiah 29:10-14
Psalm 51:10-12
Matthew 10:16
Mark 10:35-45
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-i-tough-mind-and-tender-heart
http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/who-was-db2.htm
https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements
The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Green and DeJonge
A short introduction to the Hebrew Bible by John Collins
The virtual body of Christ in a suffering world by Deanna Thompson
The Integrity of the Body of Christ: Boundary Keeping as Shared Responsibility by Mahlberg and Nessan.
Barbara enrolled in seminar courses Fall 2019